The End of an Era
by vanillafluffy
Summary: After Sam leaves for Stanford, John seeks out an old friend for comfort and is faced with a difficult choice. Companion to The Girl from Cassadaga.


Sure, I own John Winchester. (And I can make you a really sweet deal on an antique bridge in Brooklyn, New York, too.)

Nancy McGill (as introduced in The Girl From Cassadaga) is all mine.

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**The End of An Era**

It's a week and a half until Labor Day, 2001, and Nancy has just finished a muffin experiment when she hears the chime that warns her of a car coming up the drive. She doesn't have any readings scheduled, isn't expecting company...the Impala glides into view, and her heart flutters. What's John doing here in August, for goodness sake? In all the times he's been here---and this makes trip number eight---or nine or ten---he's come during the cooler months, always between November and March. Not that she minds, but she has the feeling that this break with custom isn't for a good reason.

The back door is propped wide, with a box fan set in the opening to try to move some air through the hot room. Nancy continues what she's doing, ears attuned to the thud of bootheels on the planks of the porch, the change in pitch of the fan as the approaching mass obstructs its airflow. By the sound of it, he stepped over the fan, and she quietly says, "Hello, John," not making a fuss, because she knows better.

Then he's leaning against her, brawny form pressing her against the edge of the counter and his hands are all over her. No "Hiya, Nancy," not one word of greeting, only the rasp of his stubble scraping his neck as he kisses her. His teeth are nipping at her right earlobe as his left hand slides under the bib of her apron to work at the buttons on her dress, while his right hand tugs up the hem and begins easing her panties down her hips.

Something's wrong, really wrong, because he's never like this---she can't tell what's wrong, exactly, but his usual rigid control is gone---he's radiating anger and despair and something like fear, and only the anger is at all familiar to her, but not on this scale... Every time she tries to ask him what's the matter, he makes little shushing noises, and he's bent her forward and is plunging himself into her. His anxiety lessens slightly, and she braces herself, trying to bump and a grind counterpoint to his thrusts. She isn't getting much out of this, but she won't refuse him, not when he needs contact so badly.

When he finishes, his breathing is uneven, and she senses grief. Loss. "John," she murmurs, wriggling so that she's face-to-face with him.

He doesn't look at her, buries his face against her hair, shallow exhalations hot on her ear. At last, two words, whispered: "Sam's gone."

Her stomach contracts like she's been hit. His younger son. The one he's had problems with. "What happened?" she asks, distressed for him. There's nothing worse than losing someone you have unfinished business with, she's learned that from her clientele. "Was it---something you were hunting?"

John starts back, hazel eyes alarmed as he looks at her. "No! Not _dead_---no." He shakes his head vehemently against the thought. "He left us. He managed to get a college scholarship and just...walked out on us. Dean's all kinds of tore-up about it. We tried going on a hunt afterward, but we were both off our game, and things didn't go so good. Dean's up at our friend Jim's place, with his shoulder strapped up and I---" His voice trails off for a moment, gets quieter. "I came here."

Nancy is relieved that the boys are okay. She's never actually met either of them, but she's felt John's attachment to them. Most fathers would be all kinds of happy that their kid was smart enough to get a scholarship, but God knows, John Winchester isn't your garden-variety dad. "You definitely need some R&R," she says crisply. "You've got bags under your eyes I could take out trash in."

"It's been almost three weeks," John admits. "We had a helluva fight on his way out the door." He hesitates, staring past her as if the bottle of lemon dish soap on the window sill has the answer he needs. "I told him don't bother coming back, I said he wasn't one of us any more." His face is troubled. "What if he believes me? What if I never see him again, and that's the last thing he has to remember me by?"

"Temper, temper," she sighs. "Look, right now, you may be hurting, but you're safe, and so is Dean, and so is Sam." The little shit. With what John's told her about him over the years to go on, the impression she's formed of the youth is anything but complimentary. "You need to take a few deep breaths and get your head together. You're coming unglued, Big John. We can't have that."

Usually the nickname makes him grin. Today, though, Big John's sense of humor is a couple thousand miles away, probably eating a cheeseburger and not giving a damn how much trouble it's causing.

"Tell you what," she says, tucking him gently back into his pants. "How 'bout you go upstairs and take a quick shower, and while you're doing that, I'll pack up some food, and we'll cruise over to Daytona. It's the middle of the day, middle of the week, we'll have the beach to ourselves. How does that sound?"

He thinks about it, nods. Walks around the table, toward the hall doorway, stops. She watches him try to form the words, the look of contrition apology enough, as far as she's concerned. "It's okay, John. Go shower."

It worries her that he complies without argument. Off his game? The day John Winchester lets her boss him around without some grumbling, he's not just off his game, he's really messed up. Nancy pulls out an insulated cooler, and prepares to pick up the pieces.

The blue-green water pushes the sky away, the sky shoving back as waves crest and sweep against the sand. A few high, puffy clouds laze across the clear soft blue overhead. Occasionally, the distant horizon is crossed by a small white triangle as sailboats imitating seabirds glide past. Nancy spreads a sheet on a quiet stretch of sand and anchors the corners. She doesn't say anything when John drops heavily onto the percale expanse, staring out at the place where the ocean meets the heavens.

This is something he needs to work out for himself; she has to be circumspect in offering guidance, otherwise he'll see it as meddling, and if that happens, she knows he won't come back. The wrong word at the wrong moment, any gesture that can be interpreted as possessive or needy can topple this relationship. She's still sensing loss and remorse...it's tangled up with the older grief for Mary, and Nancy reminds herself that there's nothing more foolish than envying a dead woman. She knew coming into this that John had baggage.

After a while, she digs into the cooler. When John glances over, she silently offers him a sandwich, and he accepts it. Nothing fancy; meatloaf on oat grain bread, slathered with ketchup. She watches covertly as he bites into it. There's a jug of tea, and she pours him a cup to wash down the meatloaf. Then he devours the sandwich with the appetite of a man who's just realized how long his belly's been empty and follows it up with two more.

"Save some room for dessert," she says mildly, and is reward with his first genuine smile today.

He hitches closer to her, wraps an arm around her waist. "You got something sweet for me?" John murmurs into her ear, his tone sly. He's feeling better; the man hasn't had a proper meal in she-doesn't-know-how-long, his blood sugar was probably down around his ankles.

The muffins are peanut butter, laced with chocolate chips, and she feeds him one by hand. Pretty soon, he'll start yawning, and then he'll stretch out and nap for a while. Right now, he's in neutral...he isn't satisfied with the state of affairs, but he's stopped fretting about it. Maybe she'll have him for another few days---he'll want to leave well ahead of Labor Day weekend traffic---and maybe by then he'll be rested enough to realize that what may look like the end of the world is really no different from that line out there where it looks like the ocean stops. There's a lot more out there, you just have to take it on faith.

0000

Nancy is curled up in the passenger seat as John wheels the Impala homeward from Daytona Beach. They're cruising toward the sunset, vivid with shades of red-orange and plum. The light glints off her dusty hair, and John wonders, not for the first time, why he keeps coming back to this woman. She's not even a pale copy of Mary--- Mary could've been a model. Her smile lit up a room. Nancy reminds him of those photos of raw-boned farm women during the Depression; stoic, pragmatic...maybe that's why. He doesn't want or need a courtesan---a decent meal, a quick tumble, no strings attached, that's all he asks for, and that's what Nancy gives him.

It's been...he has to think about it...it was right after than business with the minor demon possessing a biker and infesting his pack with imps...a nasty piece of work, that was. How long ago? Seven, eight years? But it isn't like he comes sniffing around a lot, he hastens to reassure himself. Sometimes he hasn't seen her for a year or more, and the longest he's ever stayed was five days---and that was only because it was an easy drive from her place to Ocala, where he was hunting.

Two years ago, he took her along when he went after a poltergeist in Savannah, and she was a real help, even though she still hasn't learned to throw a knife properly. She sticks it maybe once in five hundred times, and John can't understand it---her aim is dead-on, but her form is terrible. Although Nancy's so-called psychic abilities didn't sit too well with him in the beginning, she's been right more times than he can count, although it's usually about minor things---who's on the phone, how John tore his shirt. Or he'll walk in the door after a day on the road, without calling ahead, and the table will be set with two places and she's pulling a pot roast out of the oven.

Even today---John's grip tightens on the wheel. There's no excuse for the way he treated her when he arrived. Even when she's willing, a woman deserves more than being bent over and done like that...but not a word of protest from Nancy, just her own brand of practical sympathy. She's never made any emotional demands on him, nothing beyond ordinary requests like changing the oil in her old station wagon, or helping her paint the hallway that time. Nancy never clings, doesn't ask him where their relationship is going or any of that talk-show horseshit.

Maybe she already knows. He wouldn't put it past her.

When they get back to Nancy's house out in the boondocks, it's been dark for a while, and fireflies are little blips of neon streaking around the yard. She blinks awake and looks at John, and for just a moment, he sees sadness on her face. Then she rubs her eyes with the heels of her hands, and her familiar crooked-toothed smile meets him, and he must've imagined that flicker of sorrow.

He still feels guilty for using her; he thinks about just saying good night and hitting the road, and maybe, this time, not coming back.

Nancy climbs out of the Impala, but doesn't close her door. Instead, she walks around to his side, headlights washing out the color in her clothing so that her sun-pinked arms are the brightest things about her. Leaning in through his window, Nancy presses her mouth against his, a taste of chocolate lingering from the muffins. She rests her forearms on the door. In the glow of the dome light, he can see her nose is going to peel in a few days.

"Y'know, John, all the time you've been coming around, I don't think I've ever heard to ask for something you wanted. You'd rather do without than admit you need anything. Now, me...look, I'm a bossy bitch, and I know it." Her fingertips trace the crease in his cheeks, slinding down until her knuckles scrape lightly against the stubble on his jaw.

John opens his mouth to object. Nancy? She's real easy to get on with, and John knows damn well he's not.

"In all the time you've known me, John Winchester, have I ever had any trouble with plain-speaking about what I want or don't want?" Her voice takes on a sing-song quality, as she repeats some of the things she's told him over the years. "Rinse your whiskers out of the sink, tell me when you use the last of the milk, put down newspapers if you're gonna clean those damn guns on my kitchen table..." Another kiss, this one nibbling at his lower lip. "You think I won't tell you if you're crossing a line?"

"I'm sorry," he says hoarsely, the hardest words he knows in English or Latin.

"Just don't make a habit of it," she says in his ear, a sharp canine tooth worrying his earlobe. "Now, come to bed and let me remind you why you keep coming back...and remind me why I let you."

There's a fragrance of coffee in the air when he awakens. Faint dawn-rose light touches the lace curtains at the windows, and John lies there for a moment trying to collect his thoughts. For the first time in weeks, the Sam situation isn't gnawing at him; Nancy put her finger on it: he's safe enough at school. What's that old proverb? Something about if you raise your child right, he'll be alright even when he's grown...it isn't like Sam doesn't know what's out there. He'll be okay. John will drop by from time to time to make sure of it. Maybe he ought to head out there before he goes back up to Jim's, give Dean's shoulder more time to get healed up.

The Nancy situation, on the other hand...when he started coming around, it was easy enough to think of her as a convenient piece of ass. He's gotten used to her knowing about random things he'd never mentioned---like the time he overheard her telling her buddy Tallboy not to call him Johnny, because that had been Mary's pet name for him...he'd never told her that little fact, but that's typical Nancy. She knows him entirely too well; if she ever turned on him---John closes his eyes.

Nancy a danger to him. He's been avoiding the knowledge for years now, but today he faces it squarely. Somehow, she's become his refuge. During the long drive down from Jim's, all he could think about was how Nancy would welcome him, because she has from the first day they met. This house is where he comes for sanctuary; its air of stability is an antidote to the series of rented rooms that is a hunter's life. It's the home he hasn't had in nearly twenty years, and it disturbs him that he can tell just by the angle of the light coming through the windows what time it is.

It's too familiar, too comfortable. He can't come back here any more; it's not safe. One of two things will happen: he'll get too complacent, lose his edge and get killed, or one of these days, something bad will follow him here and get her killed. Neither is a valid option. He won't have another woman's blood on his conscience.

John climbs out of bed, looking around the cheerful room as he gets dressed. It's all lace and yellow roses, the wallpaper faded with age. Sliding the worn denims up over his hips and buttoning his chambray shirt is like putting on armor against the soft room. His worn belt isn't a gun belt, but John Wayne Winchester watched a posse of westerns when he was younger and there's always a scene where the hero straps on his six-shooter and tells his girl good-bye. This is it.

Downstairs in the kitchen, Nancy presides over the stove, a domestic goddess, wrapped in one of those old-fashioned aprons he finds curiously alluring. He doesn't recall Mary ever wearing an apron, but Nancy has a seemingly endless supply. She's putting a plactic container into a brown paper bag, which she offers to him.

"What's this?"

"Some food for the road, and there's a thermos of hot coffee in there." She looks up at John; pale eyes rest on him without accusation. "It's a long way to California. You may as well have some decent food along the way."

"Thanks, Nancy," he says, and gives her a long hug. A last hug. She's making this easy for him, in her own way.

"I'll see you when I see you," she calls from the back porch as he's climbing into the Impala. "You're always welcome here."

John takes a final look at the old house as the Impala's motor rumbles to life. There's a ripple of light against a window, and he knows she's watching him from the same place she saw him arrive, standing there at the kitchen sink as he drives away.

**The End** _of an Era..._


End file.
